National happiness is influenced by complex relationships beyond basic economic factors, according to a study published September 30, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS One by Javier I. Borráz-León of the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology, and Innovation, Mexico City and colleagues, which finds that cats and their parasites are strongly correlated with both positive and negative happiness scores worldwide.

A team led by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers has developed a wearable wrist device powered by a machine-learning algorithm that can continually track changes in arm movement impairment caused by strokes. Monitoring changes throughout the entire rehabilitation process will allow clinicians to make real-time adjustments to therapy programs for tailored interventions and personalized care instead of the one-size-fits-all current standard. 

A new 0.36-mm² photonic chip is set to advance industrial swept-source optical coherence tomography, according to a study in PhotoniX Synergy. The compact system demonstrated high-precision performance, including imaging a smartphone camera, measuring silica wafers with sub-2 µm absolute error, and gauging photoresist height with a relative error of less than 0.12%. Additionally, the integration of a ball-lens fiber probe allows for 3D imaging inside narrow, hard-to-reach industrial components

Carbon quantum dot-mediated Fe₁₁ polyoxometalate (Fe₁₁POM) enrichment for accelerated photocatalytic H₂ evolution in a Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S system. The schematic illustrates the ternary Fe₁₁POM@CQD@Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S photocatalyst. Zn_0.5Cd_0.5S harvests visible light, carbon quantum dots relay photogenerated electronsand Fe₁₁POM accepts the transferred electrons to drive proton reduction to H₂. Lactic acid consumes photogenerated holes, helping suppress charge recombination and sustain hydrogen generation.

Novel treatments may improve outcomes for chronic subdural hematoma, a common brain bleed, by enabling more complete artery closure.

A $1.62 million Appalachian Regional Commission award will help the University of Pittsburgh and Robert Morris University train at least 320 workers in advanced laser processing and fiber-optic sensing. The Pittsburgh Laser Engine will also give regional businesses access to specialized equipment and expertise.

With the increasing scale of space infrastructure such as large space telescopes, antenna arrays, and solar power stations, the payload fairing size of launch vehicles has become a critical bottleneck constraining their development. On-orbit autonomous assembly via deployable modules has emerged as an important technical approach to overcome this limitation. Deployable modules typically exhibit high packaging ratios; however, the geometric deviations caused by residual strain, assembly tolerances, and dynamic coupling effects after deployment can significantly affect docking accuracy and structural stability, and may even lead to assembly failure. Nevertheless, existing studies have mostly focused on post-deployment final configuration accuracy optimization, with insufficient attention paid to the cooperative strategies between real-time deformation control and motion control during the assembly process. Moreover, a dynamic modeling method capable of accurately describing the coupling between variable-length flexible components and rigid bodies is still lacking. Therefore, how to achieve active configuration correction and coordinated position–attitude control of deployable modules on orbit has become a key challenge in the autonomous assembly of large space structures.